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Green Bay Packers: Mason Crosby gets support from all-time great

By Tyler DunneMilwaukee Journal Sentinel

Posted:
11/25/2012 12:01:00 AM CST

Updated:
11/25/2012 08:57:01 AM CST

Green Bay kicker Mason Crosby watches his field goal attempt miss during the second quarter of their victory over the Detroit Lions on Sunday, November 18, 2012, in Detroit, Michigan. (Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MCT)

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Lost in the wave of support from friends, family and colleagues was a unique incoming call.

Morten Andersen was on Line 1.

The NFL's all-time leader in points saw Mason Crosby's missed kicks, his struggles. So this past week, Andersen reached out to the Green Bay Packers kicker. The seven-time Pro Bowl pick couldn't get through, but he's not too concerned about Crosby's psyche. This past off-season, at the Vince Lombardi Golf Classic, Andersen got a sense for what's inside Crosby.

Crosby has a howitzer right leg. He's proven. He inked a $14.75 million contract last year. But after missing seven of his last 13 kicks -- one 38-yard miss nearly costing the Packers at Detroit last weekend -- the challenge for Crosby now is between the ears.

As special teams coach Shawn Slocum said last week, kicking can be a "lonely" profession. Dealing with this isolated pressure is purely psychological.

A Zen-like focus drove Andersen through 382 career games over 25 seasons. And it's what kept Lawrence Tynes loose for his game-winning, 47-yard kick at Green Bay in the 2007 NFC Championship Game. Both can relate. Every kicker, they say, faces a demon. In his sixth season, Crosby is facing his.

At some point -- maybe Sunday at MetLife Stadium -- Crosby will be tested again.

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"We've had a lot of success here, and I've done some good things," Crosby said. "I'm going to continue to do that."

Maybe he didn't have droves of fans clamoring for his release on Twitter, but Andersen was once at a crossroads, too. Eight seasons into his career, Andersen needed help. In 1989, he hit a career-low 69% of his field goals. Too often, kicks were life and death. He wanted the game-winning kick, wanted to be perfect.

At that rate, Andersen knew he wouldn't last long. Said the kicker, "I was either going to get worse or better." So Team Andersen grew by one. He linked up with a psychologist and completely changed the way he approached kicks.

Hyper-competitiveness -- the constant unquenched thirst for pressure moments -- is typically the greatest trait an athlete can have.

Not so for kickers.

The position, Andersen explained, inherently lacks total control. Kickers can't demand the ball like Kobe Bryant or change a play like Tom Brady. After "enough failures and humiliation," Andersen rewired his thinking. He began to set more reasonable goals. No longer did he strive for a perfect season. And above all, he learned to blend into the moment.

"You just have to know you're good. You're damn good," Andersen said. "And you just have to trust and let the game play you. Whatever comes at you, then you're ready because you have prepared and you're at peace with that. It's not like you want to force anything or be stressed about anything. You can't control that anyway. That's out of your control -- how the game plays."

Andersen believes his decision to work with a psychologist and a fitness trainer extended his career by a third. Of course missed kicks are inevitable. When Andersen did hit a rut -- such as his two missed kicks in the Atlanta Falcons' 1999 season opener -- he went to his self-described "Happy Place."

"We can choose to study anything," Andersen said. "We can choose to pay attention to anything, focus on anything. We might as well focus on something positive that we can learn from.

"If Mason misses a kick, he's going to know right away what he did. It's not like he's going to be puzzled and say, 'Man, I don't know what I did on that kick.' So it's just a matter of studying your successes and hammering that home and making those dominant -- making that behavior dominant. That's your Happy Place."

By all accounts, Crosby has done that this past week. He watched old kicks, including his game-winner at New York in 2011 and his 39-yarder at Ford Field last Sunday.

"You can't beat down a missed kick and try to analyze it to a pulp and the minor little things that might be different in a miss and a make," Crosby said. "It's really just important to look at the made kicks, think those positive thoughts. That's been the process this week and I feel good."

This concept works for Tynes, who is still the Giants' kicker. His "Happy Place" is a 30-kick video. The reel of made kicks -- which does include that ice-in-veins winner at Lambeau Field -- isn't used often. Tynes dusts it off only in an emergency. Maybe four, five times in his career. But each time, it worked.

The idea came from his special teams coach, Tom Quinn. Tynes doesn't pay close attention to form or technique. That's secondary. The video's purpose is psychological.

Tynes calls it a "brain thing... a stamp of approval."

"We're all so good at what we do that when it goes bad," Tynes said, "some guys tend to overanalyze things and I think that's where you get into trouble. I revert back to knowing I can do it. I try to keep it simple. You know paralysis by analysis? That's true. In pro sports, it's all about confidence.

"Everyone can kick. Everyone can run and throw. It's just, where's your head at?"

So like the post-1989 Andersen, Tynes is at peace. He hasn't even pulled out the video this season. And when asked if Sunday's game could boil down to a kick, Tynes said he hopes it does, adding that he hasn't had such a do-or-die opportunity yet this season.

Tynes paused. Whoops, he did.

"I actually did have one. I missed it," Tynes said with a laugh. "Against the Eagles."

That's the power of the mind, of living in the moment. Tynes forgot. In the 2007 NFC title game at Green Bay, Tynes brushed off two fourth-quarter misfires to send his team to the Super Bowl. In overtime, on fourth down, he ran onto the field without seeking coach Tom Coughlin's approval.

"You have to battle demons, man," Tynes said. "Two misses in that kind of game, on that stage, certainly you do have to combat them. It's something I feel like is a strength of mine as a player. I throw away misses, and I throw away makes."

Tynes may play for the Giants -- Green Bay's opponent Sunday -- but Tynes hopes Crosby breaks out of his slump in the game. That's how kickers think. Andersen, Tynes, everybody can relate to this mental struggle.

Deadpanned Tynes, "I don't want to see him miss any on Sunday."

Tynes and Andersen both believe Crosby will escape this abyss. Both say he's "too good" for hooks and slices to linger.

To his credit, Crosby hasn't appeared lost, dazed or confused at any point. Since the misses began Oct. 7 at Indianapolis, he has faced the music. Both Crosby and Slocum have tried to explain what went wrong technically on kicks. Practice, the duo repeats, has gone well.

But that's only half the job. No other position in football, in sports, is as psychologically centric as the kicker. With a reigning MVP at quarterback and an improved defense, the Packers are counting on Crosby to fight through this.

At his locker Friday -- fittingly in a "Just Do It" Nike t-shirt -- Crosby assured he's fine. He plans to return that phone call to Andersen soon, too. For now, there's no need for too many heart-to-hearts.

"He knows I'm doing alright," Crosby said. "I've been through the fire. I can take it."